Merry Christmas

You might be wondering

why I'm back with yet another video

after having promised you

that I have done my last video

and I'm going on holiday.

I am wondering that as well

I am pretty exhausted

and really should be on holiday now

but I have come back for one final

final absolutely final video

because there’s only a few days left of the year

because I want to ask something from you

Don't worry

it's not money

I would like you if possible

to help me with the project that I have been working

very hard on the last couple of months

So for those of you who haven't heard

I have been working on a documentary about the economy

for Channel 4. I've been running up and down the country

speaking to lots and lots of different people

to try and tell a story about the country

and about the economy

and I would like if possible

to allow some of you to tell your stories as well

so I am going to ask you to

tell your stories of the economy and send them in to us

so that if possible

we can maybe use them in the documentary

and I'm going to put a video out tomorrow

with all the details of that

but I didn't feel like I could come back

at this time of year

and ask you to give me a gift without doing

at the very least something for you

so I have prepared a little Christmas message

based on the work of one of my favourite authors

Charles Dickens. His work

‘A Christmas Carol’ in which he talks about the past

the present and the future

so here's my Christmas message for 2025.

I've got a little stack of books here behind my laptop

because I wanna talk through

some of my favourite books

including a couple by Charles Dickens

so I haven't spoken about this much on the channel

but I love books

especially novels and classic fiction

I'm a massive fan of Charles Dickens

I'm normally reading about 10

15 books at a time

and one of the books that I'm reading at the moment is

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

which I'm nearly finished

I'm about, it's about a thousand pages

this book, I think I've got 100 to go

ooh, that’s in the way of my mince pies

this is Charles Dickens’ semi autobiographical work

I think the reason it's called

David Copperfield is the initials of DC

which is like a flip of CD

which is Charles Dickens' initials

he was named after

the things you used to put in computers

and in this book he talks about, you know

growing up in quite a difficult home as a kid

and having books as a kind of an escape

and something which he used to sort of yeah

help deal with difficult times when he was a kid

and that was quite funny for me

because when I was a kid

sometimes the house I grew up in was quite difficult

and I read avidly all the books in my house

including Oliver

Twist and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

and I read those when I was like a really young kid

and I didn't understand them at all basically

but it was kind of emotional to me

to see that Charles Dickens

himself

was using sort of books as an escape when he was a kid

and then when I was a kid

Charles Dickens' books were kind of an escape for me

So for anyone who doesn't know who Charles Dickens is

he is I think

arguably

the most famous English, British novelist of all time

he was writing in the 19th century

the 1800s, during the Victorian period

and I want to start my discussion of

of past, we're starting with Christmas Past

what can we learn from the past? With

what can we learn from Charles Dickens himself?

I sometimes talk about sort of the history of economics

when we read Charles Dickens

what we're reading is

a picture of what the history was like in this country

in England at a period when England

Britain

was the richest and most powerful country in the world

and a lot of what Charles Dickens writes about

is poverty and inequality and anybody who's

you know, seen or read Oliver Twist or really any of

any of Charles Dickens’ books

we'll see what he writes about a lot

is just explaining how much poverty there was

in that time

and I think what is

what is interesting to recognize about that is

you're seeing like tremendous poverty

you know, this is a time when

you know, Charles Dickens himself was sent

to I think

polish shoes in a workhouse when he was just a kid

when a lot of young children were forced to work

doing things like going up chimneys

when there was incredible poverty

and that was at the height of the Industrial Revolution

in the richest country in the world

so what does that teach us about the economy?

What that teaches us is first

poverty is not just something that happens

in poor countries.

I often think back to the term that Donald Trump used

a year or two ago when

he talked about ‘shithole countries’

and the reason I think about that a lot is

I think when he said that

what you see there is a quite naive assumption

that poverty is something that happens

in poor countries and I think sometimes

there's a little bit of naive racism underneath that

which is, like, in places like Europe

in places like the UK we can never be poor

we can never have the kind of poverty that you see in

much of Africa or in much of Asia

or in lots of Latin America

what Charles Dickens teaches us

is that poverty can happen here

that poverty did happen here

it can happen in the richest countries in the world

life can be really

really bad for ordinary people

even in phenomenally rich countries

if you do not deal with inequality

inequality is another one of the big things in his book

so I think

the first thing we can learn from Charles Dickens is

to be careful. Charles Dickens teaches us

poverty can happen in rich countries

like Britain like the US

it did happen in Britain

when Britain was the richest country in the world

And the other thing that it shows us is

that technology does not necessarily fix the problem

Dickens was writing

in the height of the Industrial Revolution

which has got to be

I think the biggest and fastest ever

increase in economical technology

in the history of the world

and he was writing from Britain

which was the centre of the Industrial Revolution

and here you have this unbelievably

massive increase in economic productivity

which should have lifted everybody out of poverty

and could have lifted everybody out of poverty

but what it actually led to was for many people

even in Britain

in the centre of the industrial revolution

in the richest country in the world

it led in many cases to desperate poverty

I think now

as we have this sort of explosion in technology

computers, the internet

and obviously what we're seeing now is AI

often you see from the sort of tech bros

the idea that technology will save us

what Dickens teaches us and what the past teaches us

is that poverty can and will happen in rich countries

if you don't take care of inequality

and technology will not necessarily save us

if we do not deal with inequality

I wanna introduce another book by Charles Dickens

because while I was writing my book

The Trading Game available in all good stores

I was reading lots of books

including this one here

which is Hard Times by Charles Dickens

another great book by Charles Dickens

he's written a lot of great books

and this book has in it an industrialist

what's he called? Bounderby or something

There's a great scene in this book

which I was reading while I wrote my book

just a couple of years ago

where this industrialist is complaining that

the government is trying to raise taxes

on industrialists like him

and he says that if we raise taxes on the rich

on the industrialists. He and all of the industrialists

the factory owners like him

will pick up their factories

and throw them into the sea

and I think this was a sort of wonderful

very like, DIckensian flourish

to highlight the absurdity of

the fact that these guys who own everything

are not gonna throw their stuff into the sea

but obviously reading that just a couple years ago

when I was writing my book

the thing that really stands out there is that

this debate which we're having now

Can you tax rich people? Should you tax rich people?

goes back a long time um

and rich people have always argued

that we shouldn't tax them

and they will always argue that we shouldn't tax them

and this is a fight which we will always have to fight

The question of course

is should we tax them or shouldn't we?

And I think

that question can also be answered by history

because when we read Dickens

we should see it as a warning that rich countries

and technologically advanced countries

can have really bad broad living standards

if you don't deal with inequality

but you should also read it I think as a sign

of hope because what Dickens shows us is that

in the relatively recent history

Now Dickens was writing a hundred and fifty years ago

but that poverty still existed in this country

even a hundred years ago

we had desperate poverty in in this country

the richest country in the world

I speak often about how

my grandma lost three of her siblings to tuberculosis

which was a disease of poverty

that was in the 1920s or the 1930s

but history also teaches us that in this country

and in most western countries

we went

in a relatively short time from this kind of broad

Dickensian poverty in rich

technologically advanced countries to very

very quickly the kind of country

that my dad lived in

where an ordinary person without any advanced degrees

with an ordinary job could afford to buy houses

have healthcare, have education all for free

have good quality food and have a pension

and that change happened in just 50 years

So I think what Dickens teaches us

and what the past teaches us is

No. 1 a warning of how things

how bad things can become

even in rich

technologically advanced countries like probably yours

I know most of our viewers are in the UK or the US

or Europe or Australia

It is a warning of how bad things can get

but the past is also a real

phenomenal source of hope for me

because it shows us that in just 50 years

from the early 20th century to the late 20th century

we moved from this Dickensian country

of phenomenal poverty

to the kind of country that my dad

and maybe your dad grew up in

where people working regular jobs

could live in financial security and dignity

and how did that happen? Well

that is another lesson that we can learn from the past

That happened because of the amazing

ambitious things that were achieved

immediately after the Second World War

which was a period where just like now

governments across the west

including the British government

had phenomenally high government debts

The government debt was I think

more than twice what it is now

as a percent of GDP after the Second World War

and despite those enormous debts

people came back from the war and of course

women also moved on from

what they had experienced in the war and they said

we are gonna demand healthcare

housing, education

food and financial security, and they got that

they achieved those things

I think one of the things that is most amazing to me

about how they did that is

when I do the work that I do today

and we'll move on to Christmas present very soon

I often get the argument back that it's impossible

it's impossible to tax rich people

it's impossible to reduce inequality

it's impossible to give people broad living standards

and that argument is made with this lesson of history

which is we did it

we did it once before in the middle of the 20th century

we moved from a country with really terrible

broad desperate poverty to one which provided a good

decent

standard of living to the vast majority of people

and they achieved that in the context of

the immediate aftermath of this terrible war

most of the countries in Europe bombed and destroyed

government debts enormously high

and no historical example of that ever being achieved

I think its unbelievably inspirational

what the people of this country

and this continent did after the Second World War

because they had never seen it done before

and they did it and they did it by taxing rich people

so when anybody ever says to you

it's impossible to reduce inequality

it's impossible to give broad

living standards to ordinary people

it's impossible to make things better

it's impossible to tax rich people

just like

the arguments are being made by the industrialists

in Dickens' time, turn around to them and say

your grandad did it your grandad did it 70 years ago

in the aftermath of probably

the most terrible thing that humanity has ever done

the Second World War

they came back from that and they said

we want things to be better

and they achieved it with no historical precedent

by taxing rich people. So yeah

your grandparents did it

history shows us things can get worse

but things can get better

and with that I'll move on to Christmas present

Okay Christmas present

there's less Dickens in this bit

where are we now?

To be honest

it's difficult for me to think about the present

without sort of thinking about

just how exhausted I am basically

I've really worked hard this year

and I'm tired and it's been difficult

I've become quite famous this year

and I've had to figure out how to deal with that

that there's been a sort of shift

especially in the last sort of few months

away from sort of arguing against my ideas

and towards sort of just calling me an idiot

which is sometimes unpleasant but to be honest

I think it's a victory

in the sense that they've given up arguing my ideas

and I've just started pointing fingers

I think that's a good sign for where we're going

but it being Christmas

I think it would be very unwise and

unkind perhaps

of me to think about

the difficulties of my own Christmas this year

my own year, without recognizing

that there will be a lot of people this year

whose Christmas will be much

much more difficult than mine

I grew up in in quite a poor family

and Christmas

was one of the few times that I got anything really

I was telling my production team

I used to make my Christmas chocolate last till Easter

my Easter chocolate last till Christmas

So I know what it's like to struggle at Christmas

but the truth is there'll be a lot of people

a lot of parents who

don't know how they're gonna

put presents under the tree

I know this is coming out just after Christmas

and I've been travelling around the last few weeks

and I've spoken to a lot of people

and the one thing that always stands out to me

when I do that is how

the vast majority of people in this country

and probably your country too

if you're watching from America or Europe or Australia

Are worried about the direction of

of the economy but the specific form of that worry

really varies from person to person

you know

I get a lot of messages on the channel

asking me for investment advice

and asking me if I think there's gonna be

a market collapse and of course

if you're asking that question

you probably have a decent amount of money to invest

and that doesn't mean

you shouldn't be worried about market collapse

but obviously

there are a lot of people that don't have any money

to be able to deal with these problems

and then there's a lot of people

whose main concern is, will I ever be able to buy a house?

which is incredibly serious

of course but there are also a lot of people

for whom the idea of ever

even buying a house is is a desperate pipe dream

because they can't even pay the rent

and there will be a lot of people who are

who this year who have had to skip meals

in order to put presents under the tree for their

for their kids

and what I feel when I see that basically, is worry

because

if different people

are in very different financial positions

and they're all worried about the economy

it creates this opportunity

especially for press owned by very wealthy people

to get them all pointing the finger at each other

and you see this a lot in the press

ideas where sort of the middle class

who are a little bit more financially secure

but are worried because they are getting poorer

are told the reason you're getting poorer

is because of people on benefits

or because of asylum seekers

you know

there's really potential for division

between people who own property

and people who don't own property in this country

and I think if we become a country

where we all advocate aggressively for our

our own economic group

and we don't protect other economic groups

then we really create this potential

which

I think is what has been happening for the last 20

25 years really

where society just sort of

gets cut off of economic protection and dignity

kind of from the bottom up

A story I sometimes tell is a story of Oasis

a very popular British pop band

punk indie what we calling them?

Indie Rock... Jack says a very popular indie rock band

when I was growing up

about how they were on the dole for a long time

they were on benefits for a long time

and they were able to live on benefits

I'm sure they were not rich

I know they come from poor backgrounds

and they're able to use that time to sort of

get their music experience

and build things up

and the Beatles had a very similar experience

working in poverty for a long period of time

and what you see there

I guess another lesson from the past

is we were for a long time

a country where young people could afford

because they were supported by the country

they live in, to take a little bit of time

to figure out what they're doing

and what they wanna do but we've cut that off now

basically

And what you see there is basically

we're sort of

cutting people off from economic security

from the bottom up, you know

during the austerity period

it hit mainly the poor, and then

you're starting to see

the percentage of people being dragged into poverty

going up and up and up and now you're seeing

with the current government

sort of going after the middle class

more and more and more people being dragged in

and when I look at the present

what I see is

a country that is being phenomenally weakened

by division essentially

It reminds me of

this is a very famous poem

which I was supposed to bring up before

I started this video but I'm bringing it up now

and you probably will all know this

there's a very famous poem by a German pastor

I think in the aftermath of the Second World War

and the Holocaust

which I'll repeat for those who don't know

but probably most of you

will know which is this is a slightly shortened version

First they came for the socialists

and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists...

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out

People always wonder if these are real. They are

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak for me

Now this is a very well known poem

and it's obviously in the context of World War two

but if you can't see the relevance

to modern day Britain

I think you don't have your eyes open to be honest

If you keep allowing

the economic structure of your society

to eat the people at the bottom of the society

eventually you will be the person being eaten

and who is gonna protect you?

And what I mean when I say that is

the reason you should care

about other people in your society

who who might be poorer than you

who might not be in the same economic situation as you

and the reason you should try to empathize for them

is not just to be a good person

and it's not just to take care of others

it is also about you

it is about protecting a society that protects you

because if you accept

living in this kind of ‘Squid Game’ society

where every few years we kill the bottom 10%

eventually you will be the bottom 10%

and who is gonna be there to protect you politically?

This is what I mean when I say

it's incredibly important

both in this country and your country

wherever you are, wherever you are watching

that the middle class

is able to ally with and protect the working class

because

if you don't protect them

then who's gonna protect you when the rich come for you

and for the houses that your kids need

but the other thing that I think

when I think about the present

and the experience I've had in the last few months

going around the country speaking to a lot of people

is that there is an enormous demand for change

in this country

and I've been all around the world this year

talking in a lot of countries

and I know there's an enormous demand for change

everywhere. There's a desperation for something more

there's a desperation for something different

I think that's why you're seeing the collapse

of traditional political parties

all across the west and including in this country

and the other thing that I've seen

is that people want to fight for something

you know I've spoken to a lot of different people

who are trying to deal with

this economic collapse in living standards

in a lot of different ways

and what I found is a lot of people are trying

to deal with it in a way

which you might describe as selfish

and there's no judgement on those people because

I know that when economic security is hard to get

you're gonna prioritize taking care of yourself

but I've also spoken to a lot of people who

alongside doing that are also trying to stand together

to protect each other and to build a better society

and what I've found I've asked a lot of people

do you feel optimistic for the future

and pretty much every time

the people who are fighting just for themselves

are terribly pessimistic about the future

but the people who are fighting for each other

with each other

believe that things can get better and will get better

and that brings me onto the final section

which is the future

So the future is a funny thing for me

because my profession really was

and in many ways still is

predicting the future, from an economic perspective

obviously, and I've got a very

very good track record of that and for a long time now

ever since 2011 really. So coming up to 15 years

I've been kind of convinced in my

predictions of the future

that living standards

and politics will get worse, and unfortunately

throughout the course of those 14

15 years, I've watched those predictions

pretty much always be right

and I think this for me raises a question of

how do we live with that knowledge?

It's been a difficult thing

which I've had to figure out

I keep having to try not to bring it up at dinner parties

but I think it's becoming more and more obvious

to more and more people that economics

and living standards and politics are getting worse

and at least in the short term that will continue

I'm very very confident of that

which raises the question of

how do we as individuals cope with that?

I think it's a difficult thing to accept

especially in a world where for many of us

we feel primarily defined by our ability to make money

we expect life to get better

generation after generation

we expect and hope that as we get older

we will get richer and more financially secure

until we get political change

and I do believe we will get it

but I don't think it will happen soon

these things which we have become used to

which we used to define ourselves

will be out of reach for the majority of people

so how do we stay calm in a world where we're told

if you're not getting richer

you're a failure and yet there are increasingly

really

diminishing possibilities of actually getting richer

and for that I'm gonna bring in another book which

is one of my favourite books

from one of my favourite authors

which I wanted to have on the table

but I must have given my copy away

I was looking around before I shot this

so just imagine I'm holding it here

one of my favourite books which I quoted in my book

which is Slaughterhouse Five by the American author

Kurt Vonnegut

where he talks about the importance of stories

of the dignity of poverty

and he speaks about how for the vast majority of

of European history

the vast majority of people were poor

we lived in Europe in very unequal societies

wealth was largely inherited

it wasn't to do with how hard you worked

or how smart you were

it was just about who your dad was

and that was the world that we lived in

and in that world

it was much more obvious that personal virtue

and personal dignity

were not connected to how rich you are

because everybody could see that how rich you are

was basically

due to how rich your dad was

and we had a lot of folk tales in European history

the most famous of course

in this country being that Robin Hood, of the dignity

of poor people and the importance of fighting

for poor people and fighting for ordinary people

of course we have these in

even in the Bible

these ideas that it is easier for a camel to pass

through the eye of a needle

than for a rich man to get into heaven

and Kurt Vonnegut talks about how,

this is Kurt Vonnegut's words

not mine, I'm paraphrasing

how in America, this new country

it hadn't, because it was a young country

it hadn't yet been able to develop these folk tales

these myths of poor people living good, virtuous

dignified, noble lives

and it had led to this kind of perception

in the mind of people that the only way to be virtuous

the only way to be noble and dignified, is to be rich

and he thinks

I think he's trying to imply in his book

that that led to a kind of a moral emptiness and a sadness

I think in the people

We did live for a good 40 or 50 years

in countries where you could get rich

if you worked hard

We don't live in those countries anymore

and I think it's phenomenally important

that we create stories for young people

especially for young men

that make it clear that you can be noble

and you can be dignified

and you can be good without being rich

because the truth is it will be almost impossible

for the vast majority of people

born today born tomorrow or even born 10

15 years ago to ever get rich

if they don't come from the right family

the question then is what are the stories

that we create for young people today?

What can young people strive to?

What can young people strive to become?

And I think you don't have to agree with me

the lesson I've Learned from going around the country

speaking to lots of people

you don't stop working

you don't stop trying to make money

cause you have to do that if you want a family

and you've got every right to want a family and a home

those are not things you should be embarrassed

for wanting, but from the people I've spoken to

in the last few months

the people who seem to have meaning

and seem to have hope

seem to believe in something for the future

are the people who alongside the work that they do

and alongside the money that they make

also try to stand together

to fight for something bigger

and I think those are the stories

which we need to create

and those are the stories which I think in his own way

Dickens was trying to tell

and I think those are the stories

which I'm gonna try my best to tell here

and I know some of you when you hear that

you might find that a little overwhelming

especially those of you who are struggling

with some of the more basics of life

and I understand that. When I was young

I was poor, and the truth is

I didn't care that much for other people

When you're poor and no one's helping you

it's very natural I think

to try your best to help yourself

and in response to that

I'm going to refer once more to the Bible

I'm trying to get more, I'm not religious

by the way, but I just like to get more Bible verses

into my stories.

And the Bible story of the widow's mite

which is in both Mark and Luke

my mum's gonna be really happy

I'm getting these Bible stories in

it's a very short story

it's included a couple of times in the Bible

of Jesus and his apostles

in a temple

and seeing all of these people donate money

and there are a lot of wealthy people

donating a lot of money

perhaps in some ostentatious ways

and a very poor widow came up

and she threw in two mites

which is an old currency I assume

obviously in modern English it's come to mean a very

very small thing

and she donated an extremely small amount

to the church and Jesus brought his disciples together

and he said to them

this poor widow has cast more in than anybody else

because everybody else cast in from their abundance

but she cast in all that she had

I would never ask anybody

to give all that you have

I know it's a difficult world

but the truth is, you know

life is not a Marvel movie

this isn't a situation of the heroes

come in and save the world

the truth is unfortunately

the vast majority of the

richest

and most powerful people in the world are actively

working towards making it worse

for whatever reason. If this is won

this will be won by a multitude of poor people

casting in their one or two pennies

and I'm not asking for money here

what I'm asking you to do is contribute something

doesn't have to be money

understand what's happening

share it with your friends

share it with your family

support good people who are doing good work

doesn't have to be me, lots of other people

it doesn't even have to be this cause but in my opinion

if you wanna find meaning and dignity in a world

which does not offer wealth to many

it is gonna be important

that you work towards something bigger than yourself

So that's it basically, this is my Christmas message

We're gonna come out with

the shout out tomorrow

asking for people to tell us their stories

on the economy

this video should come out 28th

I think we're gonna put that one out 29th

Monday evening the shout out

but that’s it, what can I say

it’s been a crazy year

I'm pretty tired and I've worked pretty hard but

I'm proud of what I've achieved

what we've achieved together here

I'm gonna go take a rest

but you guys have a good New Year

and the rest of the Christmas period

Be there for each other

cause you're gonna need each other. Good luck